getting out there

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First you’ve got to get mad

All the little birdies on Jaybird Street just love to hear the Robin goin’ “tweet tweet tweet”…

Robins have been swarming my lawn and the neighbor’s yard twice a day to gorge themselves on bugs. I’ve watched one after another wrestle big night crawlers out of the ground. As my husband mowed our lawns yesterday afternoon they gathered in our oak trees, waiting to swoop down on displaced grubs and pill bugs.

The pollen tree over my driveway has popped out with lots of dusty flowers. I watched a green cloud burst across the window pictured above – which has been shut tight the last two days – and then the wind caught it and it seemed to dance like a green ghost as it disappeared. The shiny green dust is all over my patio. I can’t wait for RAIN!

Biscuit continues to thumb her nose at the skeptics. She likes to play, but she’s so emaciated and weak, it’s going to take her a while to get up to speed. Meanwhile, Badges is constantly offering her a ball or a rope or a bit of stick.

I try to keep to my routine, it helps me to stay busy. My husband found me some cheap strawberry plants at Home Depot, about 50 cents a plant. This time I am skipping my strawberry pots – too hard to water – and putting my little plants in individual plastic pots in the green house. They’re doing great, I’ll have to get more. They will produce new plants at the end of the season, so it’s a good investment.

Drought again, I know. I’ll be careful what I plant this year. I put garlic in one of my raised beds a couple of months ago, and now it needs water. Every time I turn on the hose I feel Cal Water fascists staring down over my shoulder.

I realized the other day, we’ve got more people living on our property than we did in 2011 – a family replaced the childless couple in the house, and we replaced the single guy in the apartment. So I am appealing our water “budget,” I’ll let you know how that goes. They have a form here,

We’ve done everything they asked, and we still go over budget at least a ccf or two. I’m tired of living like this, Chico has water. They just want money for their unfunded pension and health insurance liabilities.

A substantial number of our employees are covered by a defined benefit pension plan. At present, the pension plan is underfunded because our projected pension benefit obligation exceeds the aggregate fair value of plan assets. Under applicable law, we are required to make cash contributions to the extent necessary to comply with minimum funding levels imposed by regulatory requirements. The amount of such required cash contribution is based on an actuarial valuation of the plan. The funded status of the plan can be affected by investment returns on plan assets, discount rates, mortality rates of plan participants, pension reform legislation and a number of other factors. There can be no assurance that the value of our pension plan assets will be sufficient to cover future liabilities. Although we have made contributions to our pension plan in recent years, it is possible that we could incur a pension liability adjustment, or could be required to make additional cash contributions to our pension plan, which would reduce the cash available for business and other needs.

Furthermore, the report predicted employees might even walk off the job if they were asked to either prune their benefits or pay their own benefits. Cal Water management currently pay nothing, and I’m guessing the lesser ranks pay less than 10 percent. Like most public workers, Cal Water employees retire at age 55 with 70 percent of their highest year’s salary.